Publisher: www.gallerya.ro

Marcel Tohatan

           Marcel Tohatan was born in Bucharest , on the 23-rd of June 1956. He writes short stories, essays, theatre plays, novels, screenplays for radio and TV, and... software. Computer Science graduate and physicist (The Faculty of physics at the Bucharest University ), Marcel works at first as a teacher of Physics and later on as a technical translator in Rm. Valcea where he lives during 1982 -  1989.

In 1989 he returns to Bucharest where he works as a physicist and software developer for a technology research institution and later on as a producer and host for the Romanian Broadcasting Company, trained by The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in London . One of the major playwrights to create The Round Square, the first Romanian soap opera produced in collaboratin with BBC, Marcel is also a script writer for a number of TV shows and an independent radio drama producer with The Icon's Garden, a pilot soap opera production for UNIPLUS.

In 1996 he immigrates in Canada . Certified by IBM and Novel in a number of IT related qualifications, he works as a software developer and IT consultant in Toronto and starts his own software development company, Dacris Software Inc.

His debut in literature is The Wall Paper published by Steaua (The Star) magazine in 1989, short after the Romanian Broadcasting Company presented his short story We Are, read by one of the most outstanding Romanian actors, Victor Rebengiuc.

          He has published stories and essays in Romania Literara (novel), Contemporanul, Cotitianul, Adevarul Literar, Corespondent, Canava (Odeon Theatre), Valcea Literara.

            His first published theatre play is Massmedia (Ghepardul Publishing House - 1992). Other plays are Target Aimed, Target Hit (Uniplus Radio - 1992), The Hands (Romanian Broadcasting Company - 1993), The Orchestra Conductor (Romanian Broadcasting Company - 1994), Demonstration (Odeon Theatre, Buchares - 1994), The Monument (Uniplus Radio - 1995).

            In manuscript: Blitz (theatre play), American Vision (theatre play), Soap Balloons (theatre play), The Orange Sphere (novel), Eugen (novel), The Nature Of Time (essay on philosophy of science).

Contact:
tohatan@rogers.com

English Sample Story - translated by Cristian Tohatan

It will come to be seen that until a point in time Victor Copilian has lived, in many ways, a normal life. He had a job, an age and a family, composed generally speaking of two people bound for life. His wife was a wife indeed and obviously she lived in such a way not to interfere with anything in the real life of her Victoras, taking much care to maintain the conventional frame set in which she was also included. Therefore she took care more of herself so to say.
If Copilian’s life could be summarized in one page, there wouldn’t be more than just a few words written about his wife… which in the end would probably have to be erased.
The character in this story might not have lived and maybe couldn’t exist if something in his behaviour and certainly in his thoughts and in the things he did hadn’t had the pattern of distinction, his abnormal way of life in which sense even nature cannot exist if we accept the idea that it does not produce banalities. An idea somewhat questionable but which the reader should consider as a starting point.
Thus it was something specific to Copilian, a passion which to be worthy of its name, was born when he was a child and stuck with him, gaining power as time was passing, absorbing in his adulthood almost all of his vital strength.
There are not many things known about our hero’s infantile age but we can assume that the interest that was to become over time his main obsession was triggered by one of the games in his childhood.
We can imagine that Victor Copilian, having proven himself to be a regular adult, had been a child indeed, annoying, not necessarily out of rudeness but due to his normal juvenile idling which some parents make the mistake of calling it curiosity, imagination or even a precocious intelligence, preparing with a parental indifference for their later disappointment.
In one of his first days, the baby introducing a finger into his mouth, probably the thumb because it was bigger has found out this way that the finger can be introduced.
Strangely, he did not forget about his discovery as one would have expected, but repeated with perseverance the operation of introduction for many days and weeks, step by step mastering that skill, replacing the finger with various objects, and later replacing the mouth with something else.
In the days that followed he did not let himself be spoon-fed by his mother or by the people (aunts, uncles, grand parents) who inevitably sometimes took the place of his mother’s arm. He learned quickly how to handle these utensils based on introducing them into his mouth at peak moments, but he couldn’t enjoy the praise which every normal child would’ve received because of a bad habit which was impossible to break: with the last bite he stuck the teaspoon with so much enthusiasm into his throat that he vomited everything he ate. The fun prolonging, he ended up in a hospital where the child was fed artificially.
The difficult stages of his childhood being finally overcome, things should have gone back to normal. But as he matured, the child’s unique hobby continued to expand. In class among his young friends, at home, wherever he might have been, Victor was preoccupied with only one verb: to introduce…
He started having his own secret place, an old suitcase of his dad’s, found in a very hidden location in his house, in which he would cram various objects randomly chosen, stuffing them as much as possible into one another.
First, using a hammer, the density of the objects grew and later he built himself a small hydraulic press with which he was capable of unimaginable performances.
He was harshly punished on the day when the suitcase, becoming too heavy, punctured through the floor and crashed through the lower storey of the building. The whole family, stigmatized by the Tennant Association, had to move to the first floor…
But the life of a true genius offers so many great adventures!
By studying the lives of famous inventors it can be noticed that most of the time the path to the final achievement is tedious, diving itself into a lot of failed attempts. Not even the case of Victor Copilian is excused from the rule and all those attempts did not pass through his life without leaving any marks.
The suitcase, filled over the top with objects crammed into each other, which he kept like a memory from his childhood, slowly sank into the ground until its owner could not find a way to keep it at the surface and he was asked not to stuff any more things inside and to consider it lost, leaving it to sink faster and faster towards the center of the Earth.
The loss has convinced him to finally start a serious study about the issue of introduction, this time based on the newest achievements of science and technology.
He took contact with a whole series of problems related to topology in specific, but also to the different unconventional geometries or to the structure of matter, gaining extensive knowledge in the field of his interest, within a very short time.
The lure towards applying them into practice eventually became so big that because of its pressure he modified his dimensions and his physical properties and then one day while studying the un-imaginable possibilities of the human body to facilitate the introduction he adequately expanded his mouth and subsequently the whole digestive system and introduced inside even his wife who was always nearby.
He swallowed, let’s say, even though this strange expression could create confusion in the mind of an un-aware reader who could understand that Victor Copilian literally ate his wife, an extremely in-accurate thing. He introduced her, showing her once and for all the strength of his passion.
Convinced, the woman has familiarized herself with her new way of living but continued to request a series of objects of strict necessity, from the china to the nail scissors and jewelry, which determined Copilian to gradually move with everything inside himself leaving outside for some time only his body.
Unexpected complications have followed because to enlarge the comfort offered in such an original way by her Victoras, his wife profited from his remarkable capacity of stuffing on such a scale until his body became too full, braking his apartment walls, going into his neighbour’s, who was forced to request abandonment.
It is useless to add the expenses involved by the extraction of Copilian from the damaged section of the building… Units have been dispatched.
The discomfort displayed by the entire family did not have the gift of discouraging but actually has mobilized him even more to accelerate his research which had reached an extremely advanced phase. Encouraged by the success, Copilian concentrated on introducing him into himself and reverting to his normal dimensions. The method, once discovered and perfected, permitted him a series of successive operations of introduction so that his dimensions began a process of continuous decrease at the same time with a corresponding increase in mass.
Excluded forever from social life, Victor Copilian crammed himself with pleasure into himself gaining the volume of a new-born, then of a baby bottle, then of a pacifier, in order for him to pass into the microscopic domain and sub-microscopic, ending like a black hole with total cramming into one point.
The process of introduction reached thus perfection. Nothing was left on the outside, no object, no matter how small, tied to the earthly existence of our character, pouring itself into the point in which he has introduced him into himself.
Even this story I fear will have the same fate, taking into consideration the fact that its subject is tied to the life of the famous one vanished. Later on readers will be inevitably involved and I feel obliged to launch a severe warning.
In a short time there will be no survivor! And this is not because we are social beings event though we must not forget that Copilian has lived among us, in the same space – time, filled with anxiety, at the edge of the millennium, having with us so many things in common, joy and sadness, achievements and failures, and so on and so forth.

Note from the author to the English reader:

The Introduction was written while I was living in Romania under Ceausescu’s dictatorship. Those times the people used to seek refuge from the overwhelming communist propaganda by isolating themselves into their inner space. The message embedded into this story is that the isolation of one will, sooner or later, trigger the isolation of all since we are all sharing the same inner space. Such deeply hidden messages were, at that time, the only hope that the story would have chances to escape the censorship.